Residential and commercial construction projects require several organizations to communicate with one another in order to distribute payments. A conventional construction payment management process begins with a verbal notification that a draw from the construction loan or the property owner's account will take place. The general contractor (GC) of the construction project notifies subcontractors (or any other person, firm, or corporation engaged by the GC, such as material suppliers) of the draw by telephone, fax, or at a meeting. The subcontractors prepare invoices and send them to the GC by mail, fax, hand delivery, or at a meeting with the GC. The GC and the subcontractors often must negotiate the final invoice dollar amount by telephone or at meetings. The GC confirms the invoices, enters the details into a GC project accounting system, and prepares its own invoice.
Once the invoices are complete, the GC also manually prepares a sworn statement. In the sworn statement, the GC confirms that the subcontractors engaged by the GC have performed particular services in the construction or repair of the property. In the sworn statement, the GC also confirms the dollar amount entitled to each subcontractor.
The GC forwards the executed sworn statement to the title company and the construction loan lender and/or the property owner. The lender, the property owner, or the title company notifies an inspector that an inspection of the property must be performed and sends the sworn statement to the inspector. The inspector assembles the previous inspection reports for the property. The inspector performs the new inspection and manually prepares an inspection report. The inspector distributes the inspection report to the lender, the property owner, and/or the title company by fax, mail, or hand delivery.
The lender, the property owner, and/or the title company receives the sworn statement and the inspection report by mail, fax, hand delivery, or at a meeting with the GC and/or the inspector. The lender, the property owner, and/or the title company must retrieve the previous draw and project documentation. The lender, the property owner, and/or the title company often must negotiate the payment amounts and project details with the GC by telephone, fax, or at a meeting. The lender, the property owner, and/or the title company approves the sworn statement and communicates the approval by telephone, fax, or at a meeting. The lender or the property owner then approves the disbursement of the dollar amount specified in the sworn statement.
The construction loan lender or the property owner's bank generally transfers the funds necessary to pay all of the subcontractors to an escrow account. Often the title company then disburses the funds from the escrow account to the GC. The GC and/or the title company prepares checks for the subcontractors. At this time, the subcontractors generally complete lien waivers for the previous draw of funds from the construction loan or for the work completed during the previous month. As a result, the lien waivers for the current draw or the current month are not actually released until a subsequent draw is made from the construction loan or until the next month. In addition, subcontractors may have their own subcontractors that they must pay after receiving payment from the GC.
The conventional construction payment process can take 90 days or longer from the date of the verbal draw notification to the date the subcontractors actually receive payment. The conventional construction payment process generally involves unreliable verbal notification of events upon which movement of the process is contingent. For example, if one subcontractor is unavailable to prepare an invoice or submit a lien waiver, the payment process for all of the other subcontractors can be delayed.
The conventional construction payment process also involves enormous amounts of data entry. For example, for a single large construction project, a GC often must enter hundreds of invoices into its accounting system each month. Also, a GC must gather hundreds of lien waivers each month. In addition, a GC must prepare, approve, sign, and distribute hundreds of checks to subcontractors each month. Further, a GC must store all of the paper documents collected during each draw process. The timing of the draw notifications, the approvals, and the exchanges of lien waivers for payment requires hundreds of faxes, phone calls, and meetings each month
Lenders and insurers also face significant challenges in doing business with the construction industry. Lending or insuring (of both general contractors or owner/developers) on either a project-by-project basis or on a portfolio or working capital basis is challenging for the lending institutions for a number of reasons. Projects can be very large and complex from both a construction and a financial management perspective. Projects can last up to 30 months resulting in significant inflation risk for materials and labor, risk of economic downturn, risk of GC or Sub failure. Volumes of legal and invoicing documents are required to properly account for and monitor a project. Information provided to lenders and insurers tends to be prepared by one source, the general contractor, and therefore is not independent, is frequently not up to date and in many cases is not accurate or complete. As a result of all of these issues and others, the information that lending and insurance institutions use to evaluate financial risk is often inadequate or out of date. Therefore, problem loans or projects are frequently identified late and as a result losses resulting from loan default or the occurrence of insurable events are high.